The world at a glance ... NEWS 9
Moscow
Seeking scapegoats: Russian police have
in recent weeks detained 11,000 people
at rallies in support of jailed opposition
leader Alexei Navalny, and some of those
arrested say officers tried to intimidate them
into falsely confessing that they had been
paid to protest by foreign agents. Peter
Sokovykh told CNN he was violently
thrown into a police van and then into an interrogation room
where police screamed at him for hours, saying, “We can beat you
so hard that you will be urinating blood.” Alena Kitaeva—who
works for Navalny lawyer Lyubov Sobol—allegedly had a plastic
bag put over her head and was threatened with suffocation if she
did not reveal her phone passcode. She was subsequently sentenced
to 12 days in prison. Pressed by Russian reporters to account
for the alleged abuses, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov
said, “There are no repressions in Russia.”Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Rejecting vaccines: Tanzania’s government announced last week
that it would not procure any Covid-19 vaccines for its 58 mil-
lion citizens, prompting fears that the country would endanger
the whole of Africa. Health Minister Dorothy Gwajima said that
instead of getting inoculated, Tanzanians should “use traditional
remedies that have been with us for generations,” such as herbal
concoctions and steam. President John Magufuli has down-
played the virus from the beginning, telling Tanzanians to pray
rather than wear masks or maintain social distance. The country
stopped reporting cases and fatalities last April, so it’s unclear
how bad the pandemic is there, but doctors say many patients are
dying of pneumonia and other Covid-related conditions. Africa
CDC director John Nkengasong said Tanzania’s refusal to vacci-
nate could lead to uncontrolled spread and new mutations. “This
virus has no borders.”Wellington, New Zealand
Maori victory: A Maori lawmaker who
refused to wear a necktie in the New Zealand
Parliament, likening the item to a “colonial
noose,” has succeeded in getting the leg-
islature to rewrite its dress code. Rawiri
Waititi, co-leader of the Maori Party,
was ejected during his first speech to
Parliament last December when he
removed his tie and quoted a 19th-century Maori chief who said,
as he was about to be hanged, “Take the noose from around my
neck so that I may sing my song.” This week, Waititi showed up
in Parliament wearing a hei-tiki, a traditional pendant, in lieu of a
tie, and was again booted from the chamber. After Waititi wrote
an impassioned op-ed arguing for “the right of Maori to be Maori,
whether in Parliament or in the pub,” officials announced that the
policy requiring male lawmakers to wear ties would be scrapped.Beijing
Boys must get buff: Schools in China
have been ordered to promote the mas-
culine “spirit of yang” by hiring male
ex- athletes as gym teachers and add-
ing instruction in rugged sports. The
“Proposal to Prevent the Feminization
of Male Youths” came from Si Zefu, a top
delegate with an influential governmental advisory group. He said
Chinese boys were growing up “weak, inferior, and timid” because
they were being taught by female teachers and consuming pop cul-
ture that features “pretty boys.” In recent years, People’s Liberation
Army newspapers have published stories criticizing the softness of
new recruits, calling them spoiled only children and complaining
that many of them cry during basic training.Chamoli, India
Glacier disaster: The collapse of a glacier
sent a massive wall of water, boulders, and
sediment hurtling down a valley in the
Himalayan state of Uttarakhand this week,
smashing two hydroelectric plants and
killing at least 32 people. More than 170
people are missing, many of them power-
plant workers. Authorities suspect that a
hanging glacier sheet broke off and fell into a narrow mountain
river, damming it briefly. The water level rose swiftly and then the
dam burst, spewing water and rocks downstream. Scientists blamed
climate change for the disaster and warned that more of India’s
10,000 glaciers are at risk of collapse. “If something as uncommon
as what happened on Sunday occurs in even 10 percent of our gla-
ciers, the danger to life and property is immense,” said Kalachand
Sain of the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology.Wuhan, China
No Covid lab leak? A World Health Organization team that was in
China last week investigating the origins of the coronavirus has all
but ruled out the theory that it may have accidentally leaked from
the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where scientists study bat corona-
viruses. WHO investigators said they were given access to all the
sites they requested and inspected the institute as well as Wuhan’s
now infamous wet market—which sells fish, meat, and live wild
animals, and which was linked to an early cluster of cases. The idea
that the virus came from a laboratory- related incident is “extremely
unlikely,” said the team’s leader, Peter Ben Embarek, and “isn’t a
hypothesis we suggest implies further study.” Instead, he said, it is
“overwhelmingly likely” that a bat virus evolved naturally to infect
an intermediary species and then jumped to humans.AP,
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Raging watersWaititi and his hei-tikiActivist arrested Toughen up, kids!